


After Exaltation

by Dolorosa



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 16:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16814647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolorosa/pseuds/Dolorosa
Summary: The struggle of the Light and Dark is ceaseless, and comes at great cost to those on both sides of the divide. None are more aware of this than Merriman and the Black Rider.





	After Exaltation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merriman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/gifts).



It was an odd little group. Six of them had a martial look about them: swords buckled to belts at their waists, boots made for horseback, and an uneasy expression in their eyes, as if their journey had taken them far outside the realms of comfort and familiarity. They led packhorses across the boggy ground, and muttered among themselves that they would have preferred to spend their winter in a quiet hall by a warm fire, but did not let their complaints reach the ears of the other traveller, who walked at the head of their band.

This person had an oddness about him. While he had the appearance of a young man, there was something in the terrible knowledge of his eyes that made him seem far older. He appeared at times to be almost a part of the landscape, and walked with a lightness and purpose that contrasted greatly with the unease and discontent of his six companions. He was aware of these rumblings of disunity, but the was confident that the six men would keep their concerns to themselves, trusting in the wisdom and skills of the Old One who led them to see them safely through this uncanny journey. In any case, he knew they had to press on, for they had almost reached their goal. As he led the weary band to the crown of the hill, he spotted the bubbling spring which finally confirmed they were in the right place.

'You five stay here and water the horses,' said the Old One, gesturing at the group of men who were clustered around the spring. 'It makes no sense for all of us to descend to the lake when we are only going to have to climb back out again afterwards. And you, Cian, you can come with me.'

There was some nervous shuffling from the five men, but they could see the wisdom of his suggestion, and, after opening one of the packs and distributing portions of bread, hard cheese, and strips of dried meat, they settled in around the spring, to wait. The two making the descent took nothing more than a few sips of clear spring water, and then continued along the rough path — scarcely more than an animal track — as it wound its way down the hill to a silvery lake, silent and still in the morning air. Cian was weary from long weeks of travel along wintry tracks, and the cold and the mud and the uncertainty of their journey had taken their toll even on the troupe's unusual leader, making him slower and more clumsy than he would usually be when moving through such a landscape.

'Remind me again why we are here, Merriman,' said Cian to his companion, as he paused with exasperation to untangle his cloak from one of the gorse bushes that dotted the area. The ground was muddy beneath their feet, and a damp mist filled the air, shrouding the lake ahead with a cloudy fog.

The second man sighed, and pressed his staff into the ground, scanning the path ahead with anxious eyes.

'It is not a very hospitable setting, is it?' he said, stepping heavily over a fallen boulder. 'But you must trust me, and the knowledge I bring as an Old One. There are certain stories of the land that we Old Ones are taught — of the types of powers and memories that can linger on in the wild places. This is the spot, and this is the time. He will come here, and he will help us.'

His interlocutor looked doubtful, but said nothing. The two of them continued to pick their way down the track to the lake.

And then they spotted it: a flurry of movement that broke the stillness of the wild landscape. It was a stag — lithe, graceful, and silent as it made its way down to the water, bending its antlered head to drink. The two men held back, watching, scarcely daring to breathe. And, as they observed the stag's movements from their position, the foggy air around them seemed to shift and change, confusing the senses and drawing the eye away from the stag by the lake. No time seemed to pass at all, just a breath of wind disturbing the water's surface, and by the time their gaze had returned to the animal, it had transformed from a stag into a man.

The two travellers darted forwards, closing the remaining distance between themselves and the lake's edge. Just before they reached the transformed man, Merriman held up a hand, keeping Cian back.

'You wait here on this rock,' he said. 'Keep a watchful eye out for anyone that does not belong to our party of travellers.'

Merriman made his way carefully around the water's edge, and then, his hawkish face creased in concern, flung his cloak over the man — the being — by the water, and knelt in the damp earth. He took care to keep his movements slow, and smooth, and unthreatening. The transformed man drew the cloak around his shoulders, and sat up, his eyes darting wildly from lake, to rocky path, and, eventually, to the Old One beside him.

He opened his mouth, and at first what came out was a torrent of unrecognisable sounds, wailing and bellowing like the stag he had once been. Merriman, his eyes alight with compassion, placed a heavy hand on the stag-man's shoulder.

'Tuán,' he said, in the Old Speech, 'do you remember words and language? Do you remember who you are, and what you have been?'

This act of naming seemed to bring the transformed man — Tuán — back into himself, and slowly the incoherent wails resolved themselves into the language of the Old Ones.

'I have been a stag for thirty-two years,' he said, 'and in all that time I did not know rest. Places that had been hospitable to me became intolerable, and I fled from the sound of human voices, from human habitation, and from paths walked by humans. I forgot words, speech — even my own name. All I knew was the cold, hard tracks of the forest, and the route of deer from grove to heather-covered hills to tumbling springs.'

'And before you were a stag?' prompted his interlocutor, gently.

Tuán seemed to shrink in upon himself.

'Before I was a stag, I was a man, I think. Or at least I lived in the form of a man. Kings knew me, and called me to their halls for counsel, and I roamed freely throughout the land. I knew the name of every tree and spring and circle of stones upon the hilltops, and I was boundless and uncontained. I saw kingdoms rise and fall, waves of invaders sweep the land, and then become a part of its fabric, their bones beneath its earth, their names joining those before them, claiming spaces in the landscape for their own. I saw plains levelled, and rivers burst their banks, to become lakes, and no one alive today can remember these transformations but me. And eventually old age came upon my weary body, and I fled in fear into the caves around this lake, but instead of dying I became the stag you witnessed.'

'I know about the stag,' said Merriman. 'Cast your mind back even further. You have told me of your time as a man, before these past thirty-two years. But what about before that? That was not your first life in human form, was it?'

Tuán shuddered, but he carried on talking.

'You are right. I lived a very long lifetime before that. Hundreds of years. I started out as a mortal man, but over that time, the land would not let me go, and I became something different. Not like you, Old One. Mine was another form of magic. Harsher, less controlled. I lived in a time before Old Ones, when the boundaries between this world and others were thinner, and where the wild, elemental powers of the landscape became embodied and walked among humans, and where men such as myself might subtly change into something wild and inhuman. I witnessed wars and skirmishes — little more than glorified cattle-raids, mostly — and entire kingdoms wiped out by sweeping floods, with little more than the name of a flooded plain or valley remaining as a memory that once there were people dwelling there. And eventually the weariness of age came upon me, although it was hundreds of years since anyone who had known me as a man was alive. I made my way back to this lake, and crept into the caves, and woke up in the form of an eagle, my heart fragile and fluttering and easily frightened. I lived in that shape for thirty-two years, before returning to the lake and retaining my human form once more —'

The hawkish Old One raised a hand to cut Tuán off before he began to recount his experiences a second time.

'Tuán,' he said, his voice steady and calm, 'I want to ask you more about your first human life, and the floods you witnessed. It is extremely important.'

'I will do my best to help you, but it's so dim and confused. My different lives run together, mortal man and stag and eagle and supernatural being all tangled and twisted until I can't keep track of where one ends and another begins.'

'All I need you to recall is a specific flood, and its location. There are legends and stories about you, you see, but they do not all agree — they are transformed in the telling. But there is one story that is told persistently about you by people on this island: that you crossed the sea as a young man, and spent some time in the western regions, travelling from hearth to hearth as a simple storyteller, weaving tales in exchange for a hot meal and a bed by the fire or among the hay bales in the shelter of a barn. And then, for reasons that the stories leave unclear, a river bursts its banks, covering the region in which you were resting until nothing remains but a lake, its water restless and unquiet, leaving no survivors but you, Tuán, to bear witness.'

Tuán shuddered. 'So they tell stories about that, do they?' he said, wringing his hands and grimacing, as if the memory caused him pain. 'That was a terrible time. What those stories leave out — if your retelling is representative — is that I did not arrive in those lands by choice. I was forced to flee from the land I called my home, pursued until I crossed the sea due to my part in an ill-thought-out conflict among the supernatural powers of my land. You would presumably call them beings of the Wild Magic, in the Old Speech. I was human, then, but as you know, the boundaries between the human and the inhuman were more porous, then.'

'And why did you choose those particular regions for your exile, then?' asked Merriman, keen to keep Tuán talking lucidly.

'It was not really a choice. The first vessel offering passage obviously landed in the western parts of this island, and I thought it wise to put some distance between myself and the ocean, so I retreated into the mountains. I had nothing but the clothes on my back, and my store of stories, so I could only go so far before I needed to rely on the kindness of strangers, for food and shelter. I stopped among those mountain regions, inhabited only by a handful of shepherds, because the people made me welcome. They liked my stories, and saw it as a point of pride that someone with my knowledge of the legends of the land — theirs and my own — had made his home among them.'

Merriman scarcely dared to interject, so worried was he that his questions would cloud Tuán's memory and recollections.

The stag-man, his expression clouded with pain, continued. 'They were good people, generous and kind. They did not deserve what happened next. They had been entrusted with an object of great power — an ancient cup, beautifully made, and so old no one could remember how it had come into their possession. It was kept in a little grotto in the rocky slopes that surrounded the shepherds' huts, and brought out only at moments of deep importance.'

Merriman held himself steady, and tried to keep the tension from his voice. 'And why was that, Tuán? Did they tell you why?' he asked.

'It was said,' said Tuán, lost in his recollections, 'that water drunk from this vessel gave the drinker clarity — the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, and make the right choice when faced with thorny questions. Certainly it was only brought out and used on such occasions — moments when a person's choice would have deep reverberations. I only witnessed it used three times during my sojourn.'

His expression grew dark as his thoughts turned to the next part of his tale. 'But then my pursuers caught up with me. I do not know how they were able to cross the ocean — it must have taken a phenomenal amount of magic on their part, because theirs was a power that was rooted to particular places in the land. But in any case, they arrived, and, in punishment to those who had given me shelter, they caused the river to swell and flood, overwhelming the little collection of shepherds' huts, drowning the land, sweeping all away, save me. I was cursed to flee from place to place, spending the remainder of my first human life in fear and isolation.'

And Merriman, hating himself for pursuing his next line of enquiry rather than pausing to comfort Tuán in his distress, asked his final, and most important two questions. 'Did the cup remain in place, covered by the flood? And do you remember the name of the lake that resulted?'

Tuán, tears now falling from his eyes at the pain of his memories, nodded. 'The lake is the one called the Grey Mirror in the language of the people of the region. It is high in the mountains, in a harsh, mostly uninhabited landscape. I can see from your expression that you know the place. And yes, the cup should still be there, covered by the unforgiving water.' He was overcome by emotion, and could say no more, and slumped in a miserable heap on the shoreline.

Merriman, fighting to keep the creeping sense of triumph from his voice, placed a reassuring hand on his interlocutor's shoulder. 'Rest, Tuán,' he said. 'Rest, if you can, until you are settled into this new form. I thank you for your memories, and for what recalling them has cost you.'

Tuán rose to his feet, his eyes full of grief and pain, and raised his head to whisper something into Merriman's ear. The Old One, sensing that this exchange had been observed by the vigilant Cian, strove not to react, although the weight of the knowledge with which Tuán had burdened him weighed him down. And then, reluctantly, he bade Tuán farewell. Tuán did not choose the obvious route out of the area: rather than taking the path used by Merriman and Cian, he walked into the water.

As Tuán dived into the icy depths of the lake, surfacing some distance away at the lake's edge and disappearing into the wintry, misty landscape, Merriman realised his exchange with the ancient being had been witnessed. Not by Cian, who was still crouched behind the rocky outcrop, his eyes scanning the approaches — but by another, whose presence spelled danger. Merriman reacted swiftly, sweeping a hand through the air in an expansive gesture that brought all movement in the area to a halt, taking Cian out of Time and out of reach of the being who emerged into view from the fog behind which he had been concealed.

'Old One,' he said, his voice rendering the Old Speech harsh and discordant, 'it seems the chase is on.'

'Where is your unearthly steed, Rider?' asked Merriman. 'It seems that without your horse to carry you, I would have the advantage.' 

'Oh, I have no doubt you will try your utmost to reach the lake identified to you by Tuán — I commend you on reaching that ancient being before I did, by the way. It was a nice trick you tried, leaving most of your party behind on the hilltop as a diversion. As ever, the Light is quick to view its human allies as disposable.'

'You cannot touch them, as well you are aware I know,' said Merriman, an edge of fear to his voice.

'That is true, but as you also know, I do not need to touch them to cause chaos and discord. It is so easy to whisper a word here and there: the right word in the right ear is all I need to sow doubt and conflict, and let the mortals do the rest of the work for me.'

Merriman took a step towards the Rider, his anger threatening to overwhelm him.

'When will you Old Ones ever learn that if you hold yourselves aloof, treating human beings merely as tools to be used, you will be doomed to grief and defeat? You roam the land like Tuán, filled with knowledge of its every river and mountain, understanding the language of trees, and stones, and the birds of the air, and yet you keep yourself from forging any deep connections with its people. And it will doom you to a lonely existence: without a home, without people who trust you, stories about you half-remembered and distorted in the telling.'

Merriman felt a great weariness overcoming him, for there was truth in the Rider's words, and they would remain true for the many years of his long life yet to come. He pushed this awareness aside.

'Are you in all honesty suggesting that the Dark cares more for the mortals it sweeps up in its cause than we of the Light?' he said, incredulously.

'No,' said the Rider, his voice like a door closing. 'Simply that it hurts you to hear this truth, whereas we of the Dark do not flinch away from it.'

'Enough is enough,' said Merriman, a cold fury filling his body. He reached deep inside himself, drawing power from the cold stones, the icy depths of the lake, and the very bones of the earth, and with all of his strength he pushed at the Rider.

A furious wind rose, howling across the surface of the water, raging against the rocks, and sweeping all before it. The Rider, his face pale with a kind of vicious triumph, was caught up in the gale, and flung away and out of reach. Merriman knew the tempest would not stop until it had carried the Rider — and any other beings of the Dark — far off course, so far away that they would not trouble him as he journeyed to the lake identified by Tuán, and retrieved the object of power from its watery depths. But it was a pause — a chance to take stock, to draw breath, to regain strength — not a complete defeat. And for that defeat to come, Merriman would need to continue in just the manner the Rider had accused him of adopting: apart, aloof, asking more of the mortal humans around him than they could bear or comprehend, no matter what it cost him.

He took a deep, steadying breath, and restored Cian to Time. The young man blinked, and made his way down the track to Merriman's side.

'Did the wild man tell you what you needed, Old One?' asked Cian, hesitantly. 'I could hear most of his tale, all but the last part, when he whispered something in your ear. What was that? What did he say?'

Merriman looked at Cian's face, so trusting and earnest. He thought of the Rider's words, of Tuán's long and lonely life, of the animal transformations that took Tuán further and further from the man he had once been, and of his own ceaseless years on the road as an Old One, holding back the tide of the Dark. The Rider had given voice to a truth he himself had always left unspoken, cutting him under his carefully constructed armour in a way that no direct supernatural attack could.

'You are right, Cian, that Tuán whispered something to me, after he recounted his tale. But it is better that those words be left unspoken. What he told me, then, is better that mortals do not know of it.'

And Merriman turned, pressing his staff into the rough earth of the path, and began the long climb back the way he had come. After several moments he sensed Cian's footsteps behind him, following in his wake. He kept his silence.

The mist lifted, and the lake lay, grey and silent, like an accusation.

**Author's Note:**

> The name of this fic is taken from one of the most famous lines of _Y Gododdin_ , a Middle Welsh elegiac poem lamenting the loss of men of the ancient kingdom of Gododdin who died in a futile battle. The line in question translates as _and after exaltation, there was silence_. You can read more about _Y Gododdin_ , including details of editions and translations, [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Gododdin).
> 
> This fic draws on two medieval lrish tales: _Scél Tuáin meic Chairill_ ('The Tale of Tuán mac Chairill'), and _Immacaldam Choluim Chille ocus ind Óclaig oc Carraic Eolairg_ ('The Colloquy of Colum Chille and the Youth at Carraic Eorlaig'). Both feature supernatural or semi-supernatural figures conversing with saints about the strange experiences of their long lives, revealing mysteries and truths about the world to their saintly interlocutors. _Scél Tuáin_ features a figure very similar to Tuán in my fic, who survives for hundreds of years in a human body, interspersed with periods in which he is transformed into various animal forms. The eponymous 'youth' of _Immacaldam Choluim Chille_ is more mysterious, but his story features the rather chilling moment in which the saint, having returned to his (human) companions, is asked what the otherworldly youth has told him, and responds that it 'was better for mortals not to be informed of it'. That line has always haunted me, and I borrowed it here for the final exchange between Merriman and his mortal interlocutor, Cian. 
> 
> You can find some information about the two medieval lrish tales [here in this open-access article by researcher John Carey](http://sulis.ucc.ie/cdi/wp-content/uploads/textarchive/Carey_CinDrommaSnechtai.pdf).
> 
> I have taken many liberties with the original story of Tuán, including the interlude in Britain, which is entirely my own invention. The lake which he discusses with Merriman is [Llyn Llydaw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llyn_Llydaw) in Snowdonia (its name in my fic, 'Grey Mirror', bears no resemblance to its current name), which, among other things, is held by legend to be a potential resting place for King Arthur's sword Excalibur. Here, of course, I made it a (temporary) resting place for the Grail, although what happens to that powerful object between the events of my fic and those of _Over Sea, Under Stone_ I leave to your imagination.


End file.
